The constant spam of murica politics, linux evangelists and the lack of niche communities have almost made me stop using lemmy. Almost because there just isn’t any alternatives.
I blocked those two topics a while ago. Feed has improved
How did you block politics?
By blocking related communities
In the original thread there is a discussion of those numbers which suggests they are wrong, which would fit with the fact that all other metrics are trending upwards.
We could stop implying that everyone who uses Windows is a moron…
Spotted the Windows user
Yep, you sure did!
People who don’t want to be here, leaving, isn’t necessarily a problem until their absence begins affecting the level of activity.
As long as the total user count keeps growing, that means new people are trying out Lemmy, which should mean new people who actually want to use it, are finding it.
That that is currently happening more slowly than the rate at which people are leaving the platform, isn’t cause for alarm IMO.
Lemmy doesn’t need a billion users, it needs enough to be worth using if it’s something you want to be using, and it does.
Stuff like the Reddit API drama put it in front of a lot of new people, and I think even brought it up to critical mass in terms of user activity. But except for something like that happening again, the only “fixes” I can think of are small and slow ones.
Stuff like spreading knowledge of the fediverse through word of mouth. Or purchasing ads for it with your own money.
I’ve also been playing around with the idea of creating activist stickers that “advertise” federated social media, to place in public around my city.
I think the extremist politics on here drive people away. I don’t even tell anyone I use Lemmy because of that.
Hexbear is obviously the worst, but Lemmy.ml is also openly spreading propaganda.
Not just spreading propaganda, actively censoring anything critical of their Chinese overlords as well.
Yeah, it’s a malicious instance that shouldn’t be federated.
Not just the politics, but the news threads I feel have degenerated into ragebait topics with shallow conversation. I used to find a conversation or 2 a day to participate in, but now I don’t want to touch many news or politics threads.
I see where you come from, my usual advice to new joiners is to block hexbear and to avoid news and political communities
It’s hard… when a user blocks an instance, the propaganda still shows up when the offending users comment on other instances.
Does it? I thought it muted every user of that instance
A mute is not the same as an outright block.
Muting effectively just means you don’t see the instances posts, but you can see the users comments if they are federated with your instance. For example, I have kbin blocked, but I can still interact with kbin users - when they reply to my comments or posts, which they can still do, I simply just don’t get a notification for it.
Dessalines doesn’t care about stuff like this. Beehaw has been asking for proper moderation tools forever and effectively just told to get fucked every time.
Beehaw is still using version 0.18.4 which will soon celebrate its first birthday. We made countless moderation improvements since then, but of course Beehaw won’t get those if they refuse to upgrade.
I see. I guess I just don’t go to communities hexbear is interested in
.ml is basically just as bad.
Most instances are totally defederated from Hexbear. They’re not my problem at all. My problem is literally the development team and their willingness to not only accept but further the cause of propaganda through their instance’s curated biases.
Hopefully Piefed / Mbin / Sublinks will catch up soon
This is pretty much my beef with Lemmy.
The fact that the development team is also the ownership and administration of the instance spreading propaganda is just absolutely insane to me.
Vote logs just show them supporting the extremist behavior.
Some of the dropoff is likely due to college being out for the northern hemisphere summer, and just less people online due to the nice weather. Reddit sees a similar seasonal change I believe
Maybe fix the problem where a lot of users can’t post half the time they’re on
Overall since November, its been trending upwards. Given the big spike in March, I think its only natural some people realize they didn’t want to be here in the couple months that follow.
Also there’s bit of a controversial topic lately that has made a certain demographic feel like this place is about as unwelcoming to them as much of the internet.
Also there’s bit of a controversial topic lately that has made a certain demographic feel like this place is about as unwelcoming to them as much of the internet.
Genuinely asking, is it about the bear? I saw a post about it in !unpopularopinion@lemmy.world the other day, I felt sorry for women who encountered such toxicity
That is what I am referring to. And the broader attention it has brought to the topic of misogyny in general, even when bears aren’t really the topic of discussion. From pull request discussions to discussions about misogyny vs misandry, it seems like a lot more popular topic lately.
Natural growth is better than surge. Lemmy will eventually be the defacto. Reddit will do something stupid and people will star pouring in.
I’m usually on that side, but I’m afraid we might just go down to 30k, 20k then snowballing to a very small number that would just kill the platform
I’ve been a bit concerned as well. I had gotten to know a fair number of regular commenters, but I haven’t seen probably half of them recently.
New subs are still joining the community, but it’s still low participation. The big communities still seem to be growing steadily, but it’s not necessarily bringing the positive attitude that initially won me over to Lemmy.
A lot of users being centralized on Lemmy.ml doesn’t help, lot of toxicity comes from there and you can’t just block the instance unless you also want to lose a lot of content in your feed
Most of the .ml communities have a .world equivalent that is usually more active, but I see your point
There is also a problem with feddit.de for a couple of months now, one of the bigger instances on the fediverse. People are leaving, some are opening accounts on other servers. That didn’t help at all…
They posted today on !dach@feddit.de that they were organizing to retake this.
I wish them good luck, and I hope they succeeded. Feddit.UK was also there a few months ago, hopefully people like @Emperor@feddit.uk took over
It’s a flaw in the fediverse concept. Federation is great, but if you have a big server run by a freelance admin who decides to take some time off without notifying anyone people will search for a more reliable solution. Or just go back to reddit.
Federation makes sense for a Twitter replacement. Not so much for a Reddit replacement. I get the feeling that we are at an end to the experiment. Eventually, people will realize that we cannot replace Reddit with a Fediverse based solution.
Why not? Having a look at Hexbear and Lemmy.ml, I think they are good examples why instances are good.
Blahaj comes up as another example
So many instances block Hexbear and others. We are well on the path of creating separated communities, just with the added headache of having to police federation. Not to mention the problem of power users and out-of-control mods, which federation makes worse rather than solving them.
Ultimately, I think a real Reddit replacement will have to think hard about fixing the fundamental problems of this form of social media, rather than attempting to use buzzwords or cool new ideas.
We are well on the path of creating separated communities
We might, but compared to what it was when those very distinct group of people stumbled upon each other, it wasn’t really pleasant either.
A potential scenario might be a few groups of federated servers
- hard left: hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml
- servers that block the first group, because they think it’s better: e.g. blahaj
- server who will federate with everyone: lemm.ee, reddthat, etc.
And I guess it’s okay. People can move their subscriptions in two clicks anyway, it’s easy to change instances
Wait until reddit shoots itself in the foot some more.
The Valve strategy.
The problem is that the average user on Reddit doesn’t give a fuck about the ways the platform is shooting itself in the foot, because it’s still functional, has a critical mass of users, and is still the de facto online global discussion forum.
Lemmy doesn’t serve the function well enough because there are not enough of a variety of users driving niche topics. It’s the same dozen topics I see every day. Star Trek memes, Linux discourse, data breach reports, stupid bullshit about Musk, incredibly biased political content and straight up propaganda; it gets extremely tiring to see the same stuff over and over knowing that’s just what the current userbase enjoys discussing. It also doesn’t help that the development team tacitly endorses the extremist propaganda spreading behavior on their server. You can go check mod and vote logs and see the development team actively encouraging all of this destructive behavior across the fediverse.
